New Musical YOUNG ROMANTICS in Development With Music and Lyrics by Bastille's Dan Smith
The musical follows the story of Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont and Dr John Polidori.
A new musical is in development with music and lyrics by Bastille’s Dan Smith. Young Romantics is a coming-of-age musical about five complicated friends chasing creative and romantic freedom, but at what cost?
It’s a dark and stormy night at The Villa Diodati - a grand house on the shores of Lake Geneva - where five young and notorious friends – Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont and Dr John Polidori - are caught in a complicated web of love triangles. Exiled from London’s polite society and sheltering from terrible storms, the Young Romantics spend one fateful week together that will have repercussions that reach us today.
When Byron suddenly challenges them all to write and share a brand-new horror story, no one realizes this little game will set in motion a dramatic night that changes all of their lives, inspiring the creation of two celebrated works of literature that will outlive them all: Frankenstein and The Vampyre.
Dan Smith, Music and Lyrics says: “The events of that summer are famously fascinating - this collision of huge, young personalities, stuck together inside a big house while storms rage outside - and the more you delve into the story, the wilder and more unbelievable it becomes. Beyond the sex, fame, heartbreak, and horror stories lies a deeper exploration of youth on the edge of adulthood - full of hope, creativity, chaos and the desire to escape. Our characters are trying to make sense of the world and themselves through art, all while confronting grief, trauma, inequality, and the pressure to conform.
These events unfolded over 200 years ago but feel strikingly modern; the more we explore this story, the more it becomes a mirror to the world we live in now. At the heart of “Young Romantics” are issues that feel increasingly pressing in 2026: freedom of speech, the right to love who you choose, gender equality, impossible beauty standards, self-representation and artistic integrity.
Our protagonists assert their agency and act on impulse, reminding us that people in the past were every bit as bold, conflicted and reckless as we are today.”
Melting Pot Producers Simon Friend and Hanna Osmolska continue: “We are so thrilled to be working with Dan Smith on his exciting take on the Young Romantics story. It has been an artistically invigorating experience. With his band Bastille, Dan is one of the most distinctive voices in British music, and pairing it with a story so thrilling, mysterious and sultry is the kind of artistic creation that drives us. Looking afresh at what might’ve happened on this fateful week in which two of the world’s most famous fantasy stories were brought to life, Dan promises to give British musical theatre a vital shot in the arm."
About Dan Smith
Dan Smith is a Grammy-nominated and Brit Award-winning singer, songwriter, composer, and record producer. Smith is the creative force and lead singer of BASTILLE, who have sold over 11 million records, had three number 1 albums on the UK charts and have been streamed over 7 billion times.
Smith’s screen compositions include collaborating with Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer on the theme and score of BBC’s “Planet Earth III”, alongside a symphonic rearrangement of the band’s hit “Pompeii”. He wrote original songs and scored this year’s IFTA-winning and BAFTA-nominated “Nostalgie” and wrote “Eurydice” for the original Netflix series KAOS, and “World Gone Mad” for the Netflix Feature film Bright. He composed for Leonardo DiCaprio executive-produced documentary short, “From Devil's Breath”, and Pippa Bennett-Warner's BAFTA longlisted “22+1”.
Dan is also developing “Annie Oakley Hanging”, a feature film with producer Shannon McIntosh, based on original story songs written with Ralph Pelleymounter inspired by Annie Oakley, and is working on several as-yet unannounced theatre projects.
Young Romantics is produced by Simon Friend & Hanna Osmolska for Melting Pot.
Further details will be announced soon.
